In computer networks, such as the Internet, end-users utilize various methods to download remote data files. These data files contain various types of information which is required by the end-user. In many cases these files contain certain types of information which cause them to naturally take longer to download. The ability to speed up the download of the remote data files is of value to the end-user as it would save time and produce a better overall experience.
In particular web-based traffic, using the HTTP protocol, is useful as it allows for data to be downloaded in segments. This ability to segment downloads provides an opportunity for devices like the XRoads Networks appliance which already load balance network traffic, including web traffic, to speed up these data downloads by providing further segmenting of a web-download so that multiple segments can be distributed over multiple WAN links using multiple sessions.
The XRoads Networks appliance already includes a web proxy service, which currently proxy's web requests and load balances those requests across multiple links. This method extends that capability to intercept those sessions based on specific content types and then further split up those sessions using techniques similar. to previous download manager applications.
Many products today are capable of splitting a data download into multiple segments; specifically web-based downloads, such as the FreeDownloadManager application which our S2S Download Accelerator is based on, which was originally developed based on the technology developed by GetRight in 1999.
The problem normal download accelerators is that they do not have the ability to split traffic between multiple WAN links, and thus are not able to improve performance by utilizing multiple link and provide reliability in the event that a WAN link fails.
Further there are other products on the market today which incorporate proxy services, such as web proxy engines like Squid developed in 2002. These applications receive requests from clients and then proxy those requests over the WAN. These devices typically use only a single path and/or gateway appliance for forwarding their traffic. XRoads Networks provides a unique solution in comparison as it is able to balance web-based traffic across multiple WAN links. This solution was originally developed in late 2006 and released as part of our partnership with Netsweeper.
The problem with web proxy devices is that they to do not have the ability to split traffic between multiple WAN links, and thus are not able to improve performance by utilizing multiple links and provide reliability in the event that a WAN link fails.
XRoads Networks has already solved part of this problem by modifying how our web proxy engine works so that sessions can be split across multiple WAN links.
Finally, there are other products on the market which receive requests from clients and splits those requests into partial download requests which are then distributed across multiple WAN links, these products then forward the responses from those requests back to the original requestor.
The problem with these new solutions is that while they may be able to forward the inbound connections they lack the ability to balance traffic without segmentation, and thus the functionality utilizes a large number of system resources, i.e. processing power and memory utilization.
It is only when you add the ability to offload traffic to another load balancing mechanism which does not require the more processor and memory intensive functions as segmentation within the same appliance where you see added benefits. This capability provides for faster throughput and better memory handling, thus the aforementioned solutions must use greater processing power to maintain the information about each session which reduces its scalability and lowers its overall ROI. This is a significant difference as it greatly affects pricing and overall market appeal.
The XRoads Networks solution, as described in this document, takes advantage of both segmentation and non-segmentation techniques, through the use of content based redirection, to maximum each client connection and thus optimize the overall network connectivity for our customers.